Start over with me, and create a new, clean heart within me. Psalm 51:10 (TPT)
Layer Upon Layer – The Creative Series – Part 2
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
I’ve struggled with anxiety, and each time it rears its ugly head, I cry from deep within:
“Recreate me – Renew me.”
Yet, even though Paul told his friends in Corinth that God has the power to make all things new (2 Cor 5:17), I’m left with my enduring challenges. I still ache to be made new.
Does God still create? Make new?
When he created Adam and saw him take his first breath, did he feel the same thing we do as new parents when we hold our newborn babies in our arms? Filled with possibility, but also completely terrified of what could happen? Or was God like, “it doesn’t matter what goes wrong, I can just wave a wand and make it new.”
Or is the renewing, redemptive process more complicated than that?
Creating isn’t so much what the divine does, but who the Divine is. Some describe God as the creative energy that got this whole thing (the universe and all that is in it) started. The Bible is LITTERED with verses about God creating and recreating and renewing and making new and redeeming and restoring. It’s a perpetual creativity that never ceases, always a work in progress.
We could use some of that divine perpetual creativity, right? Wars, natural disasters, heartaches, world issues around food and water, borders and protection, diseases that need curing, children that need adopting, overflowing prisons, corrupt governments… If ever there was a time the world needed some creative restoring, now would be good. (JC?)
David wrote Psalm 51 after he had taken Bathsheba for himself, killed her husband, and was outed by the Prophet Nathan. The pain of acknowledging his sin and understanding the gravity of what he had done was shattering. Soul wrenching. Dark and heavy. He was a complicated man. Sure, we like to think of him as the “Knight in Shining Armour” of the scriptures… But he was not at all “shiny.” But I digress… After he was confronted by Nathan, shame came to full bloom within him, and he sat with his actions and choices and wrote his plea to the Divine:
“Re-create me. Re-new me.”
Taking responsibility for the pain you’ve inflicted on others is weighty and sobering. You can’t undo what you’ve done, and you can’t take back what you’ve done to others, no matter how much you pray.
But God is an agent of creativity. And every artist knows that the work takes time. You can’t just click your fingers and BOOM! The beauty appears. Beauty is formed by layer upon layer of color, editing, drawing, erasing, falling down, getting up, speeding up the beat, slowing it down, hours of writing, hours of thinking… The creative process is not instantaneous. It goes much deeper than the superficial.
While we feel like we are living in the dark, creativity is at work.
Richard Rohr says, “Historic cultures saw grief as a time of incubation, transformation, and necessary hibernation. Yet this sacred space is the very space we avoid. When we avoid darkness, we avoid tension, spiritual creativity, and finally transformation. We avoid God, who works in the darkness – where we are not in control! Maybe that is the secret: relinquishing control.” (1.)
I ache for newness because I want control. I want to feel new, now. I want instantaneous and complete creation. I'm uncomfortable with darkness. But the Divine? We are invited to join the creative process of layering and coloring and editing and forming… Perhaps it begins with a poem, a prayer, a moment of honesty.
“Create in me a clean heart.” (Ps 51:10 TPT).
Go to Part 3 – Something From Nothing »
Written by Lizzy Milani
1). Richard Rohr. Everything Belongs. The Crossroad Publishing Company.
[vcex_image_grid columns=”3″ pagination=”false” thumbnail_link=”custom_link” link_title_tag=”true” custom_links_target=”_blank” overlay_style=”title-category-visible” columns_gap=”5″ img_hover_style=”fade-out” image_ids=”20934,20935,20937″ custom_links=”https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1239768002?pt=118656308&ct=blog%20footer&mt=8,https://www.pktfuel.com/dailyemail,https://www.pktfuel.com/support” img_height=”350″]